Criminalizing Emotional Turmoil
Today’s Fresno Bee asks:
How should a school react when a high school student sends a text message like this: “im gonna come to school with one of phillips guns and kill half the school ill load everyone with bullets and then shoot myself in the head right in front of u.” (“Flawed law forces court to OK text threats” (November 3, 2009) The Fresno Bee A5.)
The headline gives the impression that the Bee laments the fact a California court failed to approve a prison sentence for a stupid heartbroken kid’s empty threats.
Time to Fight Back?
Today’s newspaper brings the inane story of attorney Rick Berman being threatened with criminal charges for attempting to get into a courthouse without removing his watch.
Irony, Irony Everywhere
I seem to be seeing irony everywhere I look lately. I don’t know if it’s the world, or if it’s me.
Clowning Around With Justice
Originally, the working title for this post was “Institutionalizing Bigotry, Prejudice & Tolerance.” For years, I’ve thought about the connection between bigotry, prejudice, tolerance and about how they evolved. The ability to categorize things — friends, enemies, food, danger, among others — is not important just for people. It’s important to the survival of just about any living thing on the planet. The problem is that the same neurological processes that make this work are also behind bigotry, prejudice and tolerance. It takes a higher order of evolution to get past interacting with the world based solely on the instinct to lump everyone you meet into the same small set of categories and then respond as if your twisted picture of the world is absolutely accurate.
Which is apparently why many law enforcement officers have so much difficulty with distinguishing between people they just don’t like or understand, and criminals.
A Police Officer’s Word; A Juror’s Job
If past experience with some of the readers of this blog is any indication, many will not understand the point of this post. In addition to the prejudices favoring police officers, the point of this post is both simple and complicated. My fear is that the simplicity of the main point will swamp the complexity of what I’m really trying to get to.
Nevertheless, I’m going to put it up anyway, in the hopes that some visitors here are able to properly parse sentences and will get the point.
I’m not going to give my usual disclaimer, either.
The Very Definition of a Police State
Yesterday afternoon, I stood in the backyard at the home of friends, waiting. The day before, my friends were married in that backyard; yesterday the reception was held there. People were arriving; the reception was just getting underway.
The beginning noises of the reception were drowned out by the buzz of a small airborne black-and-white vehicle. I watched as the helicopter appeared to be repeatedly circling the yard in which I was standing. I could just read a few of the words on the tail. One stood out in capitals: “POLICE.”
Bad Cop, uh…Bad Cop
In the old days, there used to be an interrogation technique called “Good Cop/Bad Cop.” These days, the technique has fallen somewhat out of favor. In its place, we have “Bad Cop/Not So Bad Cop.”
Or increasingly, just Bad Cop.
When The Pot Calls The Kettle…
Eric Essman, a self-described left-wing radical, has recently posted several comments on my blog taking exception to my characterizations of Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer and claiming I’m being unfair to the police. I want to address the issues raised in his various comments in this blog entry instead of appending individual responses to each comment because, among other things, I hope it will clarify exactly the points I was making in the posts which were attacked — points which I feel may be lost by the distraction the discussion in those comments and my responses to them may create.
Besides, even as I write this, Mr. Essman is posting more comments on other articles I’ve written, making similar points to his prior comments. (I get it, Mr. Essman: you like the police and you don’t care much for what I’m saying. I got that after the second comment. By the sixth, it became overkill. Feel free to take a breather.)
Secondarily, I will be correcting attributions of thoughts, beliefs and attitudes to me which I do not hold and clarifying what I do actually think on those issues.
Lastly, I thought doing this would make a “regular comment” too long and since Mr. Essman’s comments follow two different posts and may come to span more at the rate he’s moving, I’ll hopefully just be able to shift everything here, to one place.
Besides, it saves me trying to write a long response and still being left looking for a topic about which to blog today. 
An Officer of the Court
First things first: I don’t write as much on this blog as I had hoped, or as I probably should. My original intent was that I’d write about “regional” (i.e., within the Fresno, California area) issues or happenings on this site; most of my writing happens at Probable Cause: The Legal Blog with the Really Low Standard of Review. (Judges, at least, should get the joke in that name; even a few attorneys might.) This isn’t an apology: I’m saying this because if you’re here wondering why the blog isn’t updated and you’re just really thirsting for something new, try the other blog.
Regardless of where I post my articles, I’m always an officer of the court. (People v. Superior Court (Rishwain, Hakeem & Ellis) (1989) 215 Cal.App.3d 1411, 1413 [264 Cal.Rptr. 28]; Tejeda v. Blas (1987) 196 Cal.App.3d 1335, 1341 [242 Cal.Rptr. 538]; Leversen v. Superior Court (1983) 34 Cal.3d 530, 537 [194 Cal.Rptr. 448].) I cite cases for that because some prosecutors and law enforcement officials disagree.
Even courts seem to disagree at times. I’m still learning the rules, but near as I can tell it works like this: When they want me to do something I’m resisting, I’m reminded that I’m an officer of the court. The rest of the time, I’m a criminal defense attorney, which means I’m not to be trusted.
W[h]ither Freedom?
Maintaining multiple blogs has turned out to be more difficult than I thought, primarily because of the way I write. Those who read Probable Cause: The Legal Blog with the Really Low Standard of Review may notice that I tend to support my comments with citations. I suppose if I simply write what’s on my mind, my own thoughts, ideas and opinions, without attempting to “support” my points in this way, I can get more blogging done. So far, though, I’ve found myself constitutionally unable to do that.
Bloggers elsewhere have been suffering a different fate.